"Well, I can name several! I don't call Scott Gholson anybody, but
there's Major Harper--No, I'm not talking too loud, Ned isn't hearing a
word. Major Harper's so hot against this thing that he brought it up,
with me, yesterday on the battlefield."
"Major Harper doesn't really know her," I softly remarked.
Harry swore with military energy. "I told him he didn't, and he fairly
snorted. _We_ don't know her, he says; you nor I nor his sister nor his
niece nor his daughters, oh, we don't know her at all; and neither do we
know Ned; Ned has graceful manners, and she's a born actress, and we're
simply infatuated by their romantic situation. Good Lordy! he got up on
his Charleston pride-of-family like a circus-girl on stilts, and 'Edgard
Ferry-Durand has got a great public career before him,' s's he, 'and no
true friend will let him think of taking a wife who is all history and
no antecedents, a blockade-runner, a spy, and the brand-new widow of a
blackguard and a jayhawker she had run away from practically on her
wedding-night.' Hy Jo'! the way he went on, you'd 'a' thought he was
already Ned's uncle-in-l'--" The speaker's face took a sudden
distress--"Great Caesar!" He pointed up to the second-story front room
and slipped down from the shelf just as Estelle came out to us with her
aunt's message for me to come in.
"How's the fair patient?" I hurried to ask as the three of us went.
"Why, Mr. Smith, she's actually been sitting up--in the twilight--at
the open window--while Aunt Martha and I smoothed up her bed."
Harry groaned.
"She's still very weak," said Aunt Martha when we came to her; "the
moment her bed was made up she asked to lie down again."
"Yes," softly exclaimed Camille, "but, oh, aunt Martha, with such
courage in those eyes!"
"Smith," privately asked the agonized Harry, "what would you do if you
were in my place; go and cut your throat from ear to ear?"
"No," I said, as black as an executioner, "but I wish you'd done it
yesterday."